"the servant is free from his master, and goes about visiting his friends and acquaintance. The poorest must have beef or mutton on the table, and what they call a dinner with their friends. Many amuse themselves with various diversions, particularly with shooting for prizes, called here wad-shooting; and many do but little business all the Christmas week; the evening of almost every day being spent in amusement." In the same work, v. 428, in the account of Keith, in Banffshire, the inhabitants are said to "have no pastimes or holidays, except dancing on Christmas and New Year's Day." [It is a saying in Lincolnshire that if there is as much ice before Christmas as would bear a goose, there will not be so much after as will bear a duck.] EVERGREEN-DECKING AT CHRISTMAS. "From every hedge is pluck'd by eager hands The verdant garb confess." Christmas, a Poem, 1. 32, &c. THIS custom, too, the Christians appear to have copied from their Pagan ancestors. Bourne, in his Antiquities of the Common People, p. 173, cites the Council of Bracara, Canon 73,' as forbidding Christians to deck their houses with bay 'Non liceat iniquas observantias agere kalendarum et ociis vacare Gentilibus, neque lauro, neque viriditate arborum cingere domos. Omnis enim hæc observatio Paganismi est. Bracc. Can. 73. Instell. Prynne, in his Histrio-Mastix, p. 581, cites nearly the same words from the 73d Canon of the Consilium Antisiodorense, in France, anno Domini 614. In the same work, p. 21, he cites the councils as forbidding the early Christians "to decke up their houses with lawrell, yvie, and greene boughes (as we use to doe in the Christmas season)." Adding from Ovid, Fast. lib. iii. : "Hedera est gratissima Baccho." Compare, also, Tertull. de Idol., cap. 15. leaves and green boughs; but this extended only to their doing it at the same time with the Pagans. The practice of decking the churches at this season is still prevalent in this country. I find the following dull epigram in an old Collection of Poetry, &c., p. 357: "At Christmas men do always ivy get, And in each corner of the house it set: But why do they then use that Bacchus-weed? Bourne cites an Oration of Gregory Nazianzen, which throws light upon the ancient rites of Christmas Day. "Let us not," says he, "celebrate the feast after an earthly, but an heavenly manner; let not our doors be crowned; let not dancing be encouraged; let not the cross-paths be adorned, the eyes fed, nor the ears delighted; let us not feast to excess, nor be drunk with wine." "Trimmyng of the temples," says Polydore Vergil (Langley's Transl. f. 100), "with hangynges, floures, boughes, and garlondes, was taken of the heathen people, whiche decked their idols and houses with suche array.' Dr. Chandler tells us, in his Travels in Greece, that it is related where Druidism prevailed the houses were decked with evergreens in December, that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes. Stow, in his Survey of London, says that "against the feast of Christmas every man's house, as also their parish churches, were decked with holme, ivy, bayes, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise garnished: among the which I read that in the year 1444, by tempest of thunder and lightning, towards the morning of Candlemas Day, at the Leadenhall, in Cornhill, a standard of tree, being set up in the midst of the pavement, fast in the ground, nailed full of holme and ivie, for disport of Christmass to the people, was torne up and cast downe by the malignant spirit1 (as was thought), and the 1 This illustrates the Spectator's observation, where he tells us that our forefathers looked into Nature with other eyes than we do now, and stones of the pavement all about were cast in the streets, and into divers houses, so that the people were sore aghast at the great tempests." In the ancient Calendar of the Church of Rome, so frequently quoted in this work, I find the following observation on Christmas Eve: "Templa exornantur." Churches are decked. us: In Herbert's Country Parson, 1675, p. 56, the author tells "Our parson takes order that the church be swept and kept clean, without dust or cobwebs, and at great festivals strawed and stuck with boughs, and perfumed with incense." A writer in the Gent. Mag. for 1765 conjectures that the ancient custom of dressing churches and houses at Christmas with laurel, box, holly, or ivy, was an allusion to many figurative expressions in the Prophets relative to Christ, the branch of righteousness, &c.; or that it was in remembrance of the Oratory of Wrythen Wands or Boughs, which was the first Christian church erected in Britain. Before we can admit either of these hypotheses, the question must be determined whether or not this custom did not prevail at this season prior to the introduction of the Christian faith amongst us. Another writer in that Magazine for July 1783, p. 578, remarking on the same usage, inquires, "May we refer the branches (as well as the palms on Palm Sunday) to this, 'And they cut down branches, and strewed them in the way?" A third writer in the same miscellany for May 1811, speaking of the manner in which the inhabitants of the North Riding of Yorkshire celebrate Christmas, says: 66 The windows and pews of the church (and also the windows of houses) are adorned with branches of holly, which remain till Good Friday." Lewis, in his English Presbyterian Eloquence, 1720, p. 17, speaking of the enthusiasts of the same period, says: "Under the censure of lew'd customs, they included all sorts of public sports, exercises, and recreations, how innocent soever-nay, the poor rosemary and bays, and Christmas-pye, is made an abomination." Gay, in his Trivia, ii. 437, describes this custom : always ascribed common natural effects to supernatural causes. It should seem that this joy of the people at Christmas was death to their infernal enemy. Envying their festal pleasures, and owing them a grudge, he took this opportunity of spoiling their sport. "When rosemary and bays, the poet's crown, Among the ancient annual disbursements of the church of St. Mary-at-Hill, in the city of London, I find the following entry: "Holme and ivy at Christmas Eve, iiijd." In Coates's History of Reading, 1802, p. 216, in the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Laurence's parish, 1505, we read: "It. payed to Makrell for the holy bush agayn Christmas, ijd." In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Martin Outwich, London, 1524, is: "Item for holy and ivy at Chrystmas, ijd. ob. 1525, Payd for holy and ivye at Chrystmas, ijd." In similar accounts for the parish of St. Margaret Westminster, 1647, we read: "Item, paid for rosemarie and bayes that was stuck about the church at Christmas, 1s. 6d." The following carol in praise of the holly, written during the reign of the sixth Henry, is in the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, 5396: "Nay, Ivy nay, it shall not be i-wys; Let Holy hafe the maystery, as the maner ys. Ivy stond without the dore; she is full sore acold. Holy and hys mery men they dawnsyn and they syng, Nay, Ivy, nay, hyt, &c. Ivy hath a lybe; she laghtit with the cold, So mot they all hafe that wyth Ivy hold, Holy hath byrdys, a ful fayre flok, The nyghtyngale, the poppyngy, the gayntyl lavyrok. Nay, Ivy, nay, hyt, &c. Good Ivy! what byrdys ast thou? Non but the howlet that kreye How! how!' Nay, Ivy, nay, hyt shall not, &c." From this it should seem that holly was used only to deck the inside of houses at Christmas; while ivy was used not only as a vintner's sign, but also among the evergreens at funerals. Bourne observes that this custom of adorning the windows at this season with bay and laurel is but seldom used in the north; but in the south, particularly at our universities, it is very common to deck not only the common windows of the town, but also the chapels of the colleges, with branches of laurel, which was used by the ancient Romans as the emblem of peace, joy, and victory. In the Christian sense, it may be applied to the victory gained over the Powers of Darkness by the coming of Christ. In a curious tract, entitled Round about our Coal Fire, or Christmas Entertainments, I find the following passage on this subject: "The rooms were embowered with holly, ivy, cyprus, bays, laurel, and misletoe, and a bouncing Christmas log in the chimney." In this account the "cyprus" is quite a new article. Indeed I should as soon have expected to have seen the yew as the cypress used on this joyful occasion. Coles, however, in his Introduction to the Knowledge of Plants (Art of Simpling, 1656), p. 64, tells us: "In some places setting up of holly, ivy, rosemary, bayes, yew, &c., in churches at Christmas is still in use." The use of box as well as yew, "to decke up houses in winter," is noticed in Parkinson's Garden of Flowers, 1629, p. 606. [And, according to Aubrey, "in several parts of Oxfordshire, particularly at Lanton, it is the custom for the maid servant to ask the man for ivy to dress the house, and if the man denies or neglects to fetch in ivy, the maid steals away a pair of his breeches, and nails them up to the gate in the yard or highway."] Coles, in the Introduction just quoted, p. 41, speaking of mistletoe, says: "It is carryed many miles to set up in houses about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a white glistering berry." I am of opinion, although Gay mentions the mistletoe among those evergreens that were put up in churches, it never entered those sacred edifices but by mistake, or ignorance of the sextons; for it was the heathenish or profane plant, as having been of such distinction in the Pagan rites of Druidism, and |